Hi Banjo,

I don't know much more about the current progress of the Intervention in the NT than the average person. However, it appears that - to connect to your concern for children and their education - the Education department in the NT now has a much more rigorous Head, who is busy reforming many procedures within his department, appointing many dedicated teachers, mobilising community support for more rigorous and consistent school attendance, etc.

As well, Noel Pearson's initiative in Cape York seems to be bearing fruit, and education administrators across the north and in remote areas are watching critically.

Even so, how to bridge the gap between up-and-away Indigenous graduates and professionals in urban areas, and young people and children in remote settlements ? Yes, this is going to be a critical issue, even if Indigenous education hotshots aren't aware of it yet, and may not ever want to be. The winding-down of universities' support programs has, in that sense, been disastrous - highly competent staff 'let go' and sacrificed to the greater good of teaching garbled versions of 'Aboriginal Culture' to gullible (and no-so-gullible) non-Indigenous students at universitieas.

So, in order for universities to be of any use to Indigenous young people in remote settlements and rural areas, Indigenous student support has to be re-instated over the next ten years or so. As those kids struggle through primary and secondary school, in very difficult circumstances, universities' Indigenous liaison and support programs should be trying to work closely with remote schools and boarding schools to keep kids in touch with their options (tertiary or VET) and to keep encouraging them to work hard and achieve their best.

Indigenous student support programs across Australia made all the difference in those critical years of 1977 through to the nineties. They will have a more difficult and sustained role reaching out to those young people in remote and rural areas, for at least the next generation - longer, if they delay.

[TBC]

[contd.]

Otherwise, we will be having this anguished discussion again, about another Intervention, in another generation or so.

Lives are at stake here, so it's appalling that universities seem to have no answers.

Perhaps the newly appointed 'First Nations Education Advisory Group' might interrupt its incredibly-important Canberra meetings and overseas conference circuits, to pay some attention to these issues ?

Cheers,

Joe